Without Naruto
by Lucillia
Summary: Team 7 and the rest of the world for that matter have to go on without Naruto when he falls in battle on the bridge in Wave.
1. Sasuke

What most people don't know was that Sasuke's survival during the battle on the bridge in Wave hadn't been due to any particular kindness or mercy on Haku's part. The boy was kind and merciful and hated killing, true. But, Haku could close his heart and do what he had to if the situation called for it. At that time, with the battle between Hatake Kakashi and Momochi Zabuza heating up and the outcome rapidly becoming uncertain, Haku didn't feel that he could afford to play around with the pair of Genin that had been trapped in his ice mirrors much longer.

In one world, Sasuke would have stepped in front of a bunch of senbon which had been aimed at vital points that were a bit lower than his and currently in a slightly different location due to positioning as the target they'd been intended for was several centimeters shorter than he was and in a different position from the one he would have taken. Miraculously, all that the senbon that would have pierced him would have managed to do to the Uchiha boy would have been to knock him out for a few minutes. Of course there would have been some punctured internal organs which Kakashi and the local doctor would have dealt with later, but other than that, everything would have turned out pretty much fine.

In this world however, Sasuke hesitated for an instant. It was but an instant, but it was still an instant too long. In a battle such as this, the difference in placement of a single senbon could make a significant difference in the outcome, a difference in mobility, or in this case a difference between life and death. Haku could kill his heart if he had to, and this time he did. He also killed someone else as well. He killed the small boy he had met and befriended in the forest.

After Naruto had been punctured by dozens of the needles that were Haku's weapon of choice, there had been a welling of something ominous which vanished as Naruto breathed his last, the Kyuubi having been unable to heal wounds that still had weapons stuck in them in time.

As Naruto lay there not moving, not breathing, not reacting to the fact that he was practically standing on his hand, Sasuke stood stunned. That smiling idiot that chased after him and swore he'd beat him was gone. That smiling, prank pulling idiot who had sworn he'd become Hokage hadn't lived to see his dream as he'd sometimes half believed the boy would have. That idiot that he'd avoided becoming friends with because of what he feared he'd do to him if he did had died anyway, and it had been all his fault. The idiot had died because he'd chosen to cling to his own pathetic life. He'd changed his mind an instant later, but it had been too late. Far too late.

"Is this the first time you've seen a comrade die?" the masked ninja asked, almost as if he were mocking him.

"No." he said, finally breaking, falling to his knees. "NoNoNoNoNoNoNo! Not my team too!"

"Too?" asked the masked boy.

That question was like a slap to the face, and as he knelt beside his fallen teammate, he vowed that he would get his revenge. He vowed that he would kill him even if it took him the rest of his pathetic life to become strong enough to do so. He'd kill him and his brother.

As he stood there helpless to do anything about it however, Kakashi took his chance for revenge away from him less than two minutes later when the man punched a hole in the masked boy's chest while trying to kill the bastard's master. Afterward, the fight between Kakashi and Zabuza ended when Gato arrived revealing that he never planned on paying the missing-nin, and a new fight began. A new fight that had only barely been won with the help of the villagers because the ninja had almost completely tired themselves out fighting each-other as Gato had planned. Many died that day. Amongst the dead was Gato.

When the fight ended and all there was left to do was gather up the fallen, there was no miracle revival as Sakura sobbed over her teammate's body, as would have happened if this had been another world, since Naruto wasn't unconscious and wasn't in a state of false death. Kakashi cried as well shedding silent tears from both his covered eye and his normal one after he had checked and double checked Naruto's vitals and found nothing. As for Sasuke, he had long ago run out of tears, though there was an odd tightness in the back of his throat as he watched his teammates cry over a boy whose death he'd been certain he wouldn't mourn only that morning.

"But he wasn't supposed to die!" Inari, the hero of the hour wailed as he sobbed in his mother's arms several feet away.

"He was so much like his father, even in this." Kakashi said as he finally scooped up the body he'd stared at for a good half hour working up the will to carry off of the battlefield.

"What do you mean?" Tazuna asked.

The guilt over the death of one of the members of the team he'd tricked into helping him had aged the man several years in only a few minutes.

"His father sacrificed himself to save Konoha from the Kyuubi." Kakashi said as he pulled the senbon from Naruto's body far too late to do any good.

Sasuke was startled by this statement. Kakashi had known who the dobe's father was? Nobody he knew had known who Naruto's parents had been. He'd asked once or twice out of curiosity, and had never gotten an answer despite the fact that people had been practically falling over themselves in order to cater to him after the Massacre.

"Minato-sensei had wanted him to be seen as a hero. At least here, he will be." Kakashi said sadly as he carried Naruto's body back towards the bridge builder's home where their belongings were stored.

The walk home after the bodies of the fallen townspeople had been buried and the bridge had been completed was a silent one with Kakashi walking point carrying the black bordered scroll that contained Naruto's body. The only reason the man had had such a thing in which to store Naruto's body was because such scrolls were standard equipment for any mission above D-rank as there had been any number of spectacular accidents where Genin had accidentally killed themselves that had taken place on C-rank missions .

When they had set out, it became apparent that in the few short days that Naruto had been in Wave, he'd made quite an impact. Almost everyone in that small port town by the bridge had gathered to see them depart and pay their final respects. A sobbing Inari had stood at the head of a sizable crowd that had included the very young and the very old, all of whom had had something nice to say about Naruto.

The same could not be said of Konoha however. In contrast to Naruto's departure from Wave, almost nobody was there to greet them when they arrived at Konoha, though Sasuke had the feeling that there should have been. The only people who had been there to greet them at the gates were the Hokage with his advisors in tow, and a rather drunk looking Umino Iruka who was being supported by the guy from the ramen stand that Naruto had liked. Naruto may have been a hero in Wave, but he was practically nobody here. A nobody who had been the Hokage's pet and the favorite student of a rather ordinary Academy Instructor.

The small group had been standing before the gates stopped them before they could reach the desk sign in putting an end to the mission from hell. What the Hokage and the group of ANBU that appeared out of nowhere when they arrived did next confused Sasuke and shocked the hell out of Sakura for some strange reason. After stopping them in front of the gates, the Hokage summoned a litter out of a storage scroll which Kakashi then lay Naruto's body on. As soon as Naruto's body had been settled, the Hokage draped a robe that Sasuke hadn't noticed the old man had been holding over the boy and set a very familiar hat atop his body. The four ANBU who had made their sudden appearance then picked up the litter and carried it into the village.

The Hokage followed the litter alongside his advisors with his head bowed. Iruka and the ramen stand owner followed suit as well. After a bit of milling about, Kakashi then indicated that they should follow in a similar manner. There was shock and confusion in the eyes of the two gate guards who then did something unusual when they reached the sign-in desk. Rather than asking them to sign in as they normally would have, the men moved and stood in a manner that seemed to be part of some sort of prescribed ritual that they only half knew.

"Who goes there?" one of the guards asked in a formal manner though his body language spoke of being caught almost completely flat-footed and struggling to keep up with a script he'd thought he'd never have to use.

"The Godaime Hokage has fallen in the field of battle." the Hokage said formally with a look in his eyes that suggested that he was lost in a different memory at the moment. "We return the Godaime Hokage to his rightful home and resting place."

"What's going on?" Sasuke quietly asked his teammate while the strange ritual continued.

"They do this when a Hokage falls outside the gates of the village. It's a ritual that's loosely based on what happened after the Shodai Hokage's death." Sakura whispered back. "They did this for the Nidaime and the Yondaime. Why are they doing it for Naruto though?"

Eventually, the ritual was complete and they were allowed to pass. The strange procession then made its way to the Hokage Tower. Along the way to the tower that served as the Hokage's residence, people turned to stop and stare, they mostly stared in shock and confusion. Much the same way Sasuke felt as he followed along in the strange procession. Some people however, some of the older people like the old man with the wok attached to his back, started crying apparently realizing what was going on and finding it in their hearts to care about Naruto in death as they hadn't done in life. One person had started to cheer as they passed, only to be slapped into silence by a person standing next to him.

All along the way to the tower, there was a great deal of whispering and muttering from those who had watched the procession in confusion, and the two words that came up the most were "Demon" and "Why?". After a while of passing through mostly silent streets in which a great deal of quiet muttering could be heard, they reached the Hokage Tower, and Naruto's body was set down in a stone chamber in the basement. As soon as Naruto's body had been laid down, Sasuke was informed that there would be a funeral in which Naruto would be interred with the other Hokages in two days time. As Head of the Uchiha Clan and Naruto's teammate he was not allowed to skip it as he had an important role to fulfill.

Sasuke's head was reeling as he headed home. As the last of the Uchiha he had an important role to fill but, he had no idea what that role was though. His father had died before he could teach him such things as well as just about everything else that could come up in his life as a Uchiha.

Two days after he returned to the village with his surviving teammates, Sasuke stood in front of a crowd, stumbling through a ritual he'd only read up on the night before after discovering it in the midst of a frantic search through the Clan Archives. As he fumbled yet another line, he wished his father was there instead. His father would have known what to do and not made an ass of himself while doing it, as his father had apparently gone through this at Naruto's father's funeral.

Hadn't that been quite the shock. The Dobe's father had been none other than the Yondaime Hokage himself. Apparently, Naruto had always been Hokage without realizing it because the Yondaime had named the boy his successor as he died. The Sandaime had only temporarily retaken the position, and had been acting as regent until Naruto was old enough. Nobody had told the boy this though, as the Sandaime had wanted the boy to feel he had to work to earn the position that by all rights had already been his rather than to feel that he'd been entitled to it since those who worked for the position they had, almost always did a much better job at it than those who had just had the position they held in life handed to them, and the Sandaime had wanted Naruto to have the drive necessary for someone who was working to earn his spot so he could channel it into his role as the Hokage when the time came.

That time would never come however.

After the funeral had ended, Sasuke found himself tracing a name on the Memorial Stone as he watched the construction on the Hokage Monument. Naruto had gotten his wish. He was on the stone where he said he'd be the day their team had come together, just not how he'd expected he'd end up there. The person who had put Naruto's name down on the stone however had put him down as Namikaze Naruto, Godaime Hokage which irked Sasuke.

Namikaze Naruto was a stranger to him. Namikaze Naruto hadn't been the boy who had attempted to befriend him on his first day at the Academy only to be rebuffed. Namikaze Naruto hadn't pulled pranks on everyone trying to get people to notice him. Namikaze Naruto hadn't been there trying and failing to pull him back down to earth before pounding him down into it. Namikaze Naruto hadn't had to struggle to gain acknowledgement from the villagers who had looked at him with hate in their eyes for something he hadn't done. Namikaze Naruto hadn't had to fight for every scrap of attention and affection he'd gotten.

Uzumaki Naruto had done all of those things and more.

**Edited 12-2-12**


	2. Sakura

Haruno Sakura sat at her family's dining table picking at her dinner, unable to eat. She had wished that Naruto were gone from the team so she could be alone with Sasuke since day one. Now that the blond was gone, she found herself willing to give just about anything to have him back. Things hadn't turned out the way she'd imagined they would be when she'd pictured Naruto gone, and she had found herself missing the blond loudmouth who had made the world bright without her realizing it until he'd died and everything had become flat and dull.

Beside her, her parents were guiltily picking at their own dinners, but that was for another reason. Her parents had believed her teammate to be the demon he had taken with him into death. Learning that they had practically spit on the Yondaime's son, the Yondaime's sacrifice, the Yondaime's named successor had left them feeling ill.

Had it been only a couple of weeks ago that Naruto had been running around the village messing up D-ranked missions and playing with that group of kids that followed him about? It seemed like forever ago and just yesterday at the same time. There were moments when she was walking in the village and she found herself expecting to hear Naruto running up to her to ask her out at any second only to realize moments later that he wouldn't because he was gone now and would never be coming back.

She remembered how excited Naruto had been to get out of the village and onto his first C-Ranked mission, and how annoying she'd thought it was at the time. It had turned out that the customer had lied however. It hadn't been a C-ranked mission at all. When it turned into a B-rank, Naruto had still wanted to forge ahead and continue the mission, and he had continued to forge on ahead after it had gone up to an A-rank despite the fact that such missions were Jounin level missions. All the while he'd been smiling that stupid smile and acting like the moron he'd been in the Academy, right up to the point when he'd gotten trapped in the enemy ninja's ice mirrors alongside Sasuke and gotten himself killed fighting the ninja who had trapped Sasuke.

Naruto wasn't even supposed to have been on that bridge. The day before he'd died, Naruto had been working himself to exhaustion in order to master the tree climbing exercise that Kakashi-sensei had shown them and had been supposed to be sleeping off the Chakra Exhaustion that had practically dropped him the night before like he had been when they had left the thrice damned Tazuna's house. Naruto had woke up to find them gone, and had gone on to try to save the day despite the condition he had been in. He'd rescued the bridge builder's daughter and grandson in a battle that had taken place before he'd arrived at the bridge where he'd made a fool of himself for a final time, and it had probably been those factors that had led to Naruto's death.

Naruto may have helped free a country from a tyrant like a hero in the adventure stories she'd liked to read when she was younger during that mission, but he had done so at the cost of his life. After the battle had ended and he'd been found lying on the ground punctured by dozens and dozens of senbon, she had half expected him to get up and grin and tell her it was all a prank. It hadn't been a prank at all however. His eyes had been wide open and stared at nothing. Those blue blue eyes that she hadn't realized had belonged to the Yondaime before him. The hero had died saving a village, a nation, much like his father had twelve years ago when he'd defeated the Kyuubi.

It had been when they had come home that she'd learned that Naruto had been someone special someone important, like the prince who had been raised as a pig farmer in one of her favorite fairy-tales. Unlike in that fairy-tale however, Naruto hadn't risen from his low station to become king while he was alive. It had only been after the boy's death that everyone learned who the outcast who had run wild through the village had been, who the child who had been almost universally hated had been.

When she and her surviving teammates had returned to Konoha with the scroll that had contained Naruto's body, they had been met at the gates by the Hokage and Iruka-sensei. Naruto's body had then been carried into the village by four ANBU captains as there had been no family or students to bring him in as the Nidaime's students and nephew had done after he'd fallen during the 1st War. Being just about all the people that Naruto had in the world, the rest of Team 7 had followed the current Hokage along with Iruka-sensei and the proprietor of Ichiraku Ramen as Naruto's body made its way through the village to the Hokage Tower where it was prepared for burial.

On that day, she had walked that procession in a state of complete confusion, wondering why the Hokage had done this for Naruto, wondering why the Hokage had called Naruto the Godaime Hokage when speaking to the gate guards who hadn't been informed beforehand that this would be happening, as was tradition. A tradition that had been started the day the Shodai Hokage's body had been brought to Konoha's gates by his men after he had finally fallen on the battlefield after decades of being victorious, stunning the gate guards and all who had watched as he was carried to the Tower that was the Hokage's official residence where he'd lain in state before his funeral.

Following the sudden death of the Shodai Hokage, this procession that had been based on the events of that dark day had happened only twice before in Konoha's history. Once when the Nidaime Hokage had fallen during the First Shinobi World War, and once when the Yondaime had fallen just outside of Konoha's gates after giving his life to defeat the Kyuubi. The Kyuubi that she'd recently learned had been sealed inside the Yondaime's newborn son because it could not be killed through traditional means. It had been Naruto's death that had finally - hopefully - killed the creature.

That day, the day her team had returned to Konoha short one Genin, had been the third time that that procession had occurred, and it had been for a Godaime Hokage that the village hadn't had any idea existed. A Godaime Hokage that she had frequently abused and generally treated badly like almost everyone else in the village. A Godaime Hokage who had forgiven them every time they had hurt him, and had sworn to protect them until the day he died.

Two days after their return to Konoha, there was a funeral. It had been attended by just about everyone in Konoha, and most of the attendees looked guilty rather than sad. Amongst the few mourners who actually seemed to mourn Naruto's passing, there had been a strange white-haired man who wouldn't stop crying that she vaguely recognized as being one of the Sannin. There had also been a group of strangers in black cloaks whose faces were covered by large hats that nobody recognized there as well, and she also saw a strange man in an orange mask sitting in a nearby tree, but when she asked about him, nobody could tell her who he was either.

Today, their team which was sadly devoid of a certain blond nuisance had supposed to have been restarting training in preparation for missions. They'd been given an older Genin whose teammates had been promoted in order to round out their numbers that morning, and Kakashi-sensei had arrived late as usual. But, unlike every other time, he'd turned up without his usual excuse, and the smell of alcohol had accompanied him. When he'd looked at the three of them who had been standing well apart with Sasuke sending the newcomer wary glances every now and then, the look in the man's visible eye had been flat and dead, much as it had been all the way back from Wave. Instead of training them like he should have done, he had taken one look at their team, before turning around and leaving without another word.

After Kakashi-sensei had left, Sasuke had gone off to do only the gods knew what, and she hadn't been in the mood to follow him, much less ask for a date. Sasuke had been strange ever since Naruto had died, and she had a feeling that it was because Naruto had died right in front of him and there hadn't been anything he could do about it.

She didn't know or care about what her new "teammate" had done after she and Sasuke had left. She didn't know him. She'd never met him before that morning. She herself had wandered around aimlessly. It was strange to not have Naruto dogging at her heels begging for a date, or at the very least a little bit of attention. It was strange not to hear "Sakura-chan" every few minutes or so until it was time for her to go home. It was strange not having Naruto there period.

She had found herself passing the Academy at one point in her wanderings and remembering her days there, days that had been filled with Naruto despite the fact that she had done her best to ignore him ever since the love-struck seven year-old that her parents had told her to avoid had asked her to play with him. She found that she still remembered the completely amazed look the boy had given her when she'd given him Giri choco on Valentines day their first year in the Academy, and how she'd punched him in the face for the first time when he'd reciprocated by giving her an albino frog on White Day though up until then she'd thought she'd forgotten those incidents. Despite the fact that it was considered exceedingly rude, she hadn't given Naruto Giri choco again. Every Valentines day after that, he'd looked at her hopefully as she handed out Giri choco to all of her other male classmates except for Sasuke whom she always gave honmei choco.

To a seven year old boy, that amazingly rare frog that she had received on that long ago White Day had probably been the neatest thing in the world. She hadn't appreciated the gift however, and had thrown the creature away and hit Naruto for giving it to her. Despite this setback, Naruto had remained undaunted, and continued to pursue her affections to the point that he'd been willing to impersonate Sasuke in order to get even a scrap of positive attention from her.

For years Naruto had pursued her with a single-minded purpose that had almost been equal to his drive to become Hokage, and for years she'd refused him and now, that one constant in her life, that one being who had been a fixture much like her parents, Sasuke-kun and Ino was gone and would never come back, would never run up to her smiling that hopeful smile and calling her Sakura-chan again.

Eventually, when it all became too much, when she had found that everything she passed somehow reminded her of Naruto, she had gone home where her mother had tried to comfort her. Her mother had prepared all of her favorite foods for dinner this evening like she had done evening since the day she'd returned, and she had been as unable to eat any of it as she had been on every other night since that day.

Back when she was a little girl, she had gone to the Ninja Academy with stars in her eyes and a head full of dreams of adventure and romance like in the stories her mother had read to her at night, and she had eventually read to herself. She had thought that she'd become a lovely and graceful Kunoichi like one of the ones in the books she had stolen from her mother and secretly read under the covers at night, feeling like a real ninja for being able to get away with it. She had thought she would be swept off her feet by a handsome ninja from one of the clans and that she'd live happily ever after.

With Naruto's passing and all that had come of it, reality had ruthlessly squashed those dreams, and had shown her what being a ninja was really all about. It had taken the death of one of her teammates for her to finally open her eyes to the world she had put herself in. She didn't like what she saw.

If blood and death were really what being a ninja was all about, she didn't want to be one any longer...

**Edited 12-2-12**


	3. Kakashi

Kakashi didn't even bother showing up to train his team that day, he didn't have the heart to do so, especially considering what was going to happen as soon as a certain time came around. There was no point in giving his remaining Genin and that interloper who was meant to take Naruto's place false hope. He'd never wanted a Genin team in the first place but, thanks to Naruto's exuberant antics he had started warming up to the idea after a while even though it had been a most painful reminder of his early losses. Any desire he may have fostered for a team of his own had ended the day Naruto's life had ended. Much like Obito, Naruto had been the glue that held Team 7 together. Without him, the team had shattered. He had shattered.

He had known Naruto since before the boy was born back in those final peaceful days before his life had shattered yet again, a life that had been shattered more times than he could count. First had been the loss of the mother he barely remembered. Second had been his father who had hoped that his disgrace would go to the grave with him. Third had been his original Genin team who had died in the war. Fourth had been Obito. Fith had been Rin who had died by his own hand so the secrets she held couldn't be taken by the enemy. Sixth had been Minato-sensei and Kushina-san. Seventh through Twelfth had been ANBU teammates. The thirteenth and final time his life had fallen apart had been when Naruto had followed his parents into the afterlife.

In that brief peaceful period between the end of the Third War and the Kyuubi attack when Minato-sensei had been Hokage and everything had been looking up despite everything that had been lost in the war, there had been that Summer day where he'd pressed his ear against Kushina's stomach hoping to hear Naruto's heartbeat and had been kicked in the cheek by a tiny foot. That late Summer day when he had met Naruto for the first time. That late summer day when he'd forgotten his guilt for just a moment and sworn he'd become Naruto's teacher and would train the boy to become an even better ninja than his father.

After the Kyuubi attack, he had spun into a spiral of depression he didn't believe he would ever be able to come out of alive. It had been Naruto who had saved him in the end. Little Naruto who had run away from his minder and who had cheerfully grinned as he tried to pull off his mask when he'd caught the boy. After that afternoon, he began to live to see that child's smile again and again.

Over the years after he'd put his life back together again, he had watched Naruto from a distance, knowing that if he got too close people would ask questions about why Namikaze Minato's student was paying so much attention to a blond child that now that they thought about it looked like a cross between the Yondaime and his rumored girlfriend. Over those years, Naruto had picked himself up off the ground countless times and grew up to be a child who was much like both his mother Kushina and Obito. When he'd been given Naruto to train, he had thought that maybe someone out there had decided that he'd suffered enough.

He now knew that it had been because he hadn't. Hadn't suffered enough that was. He had just been set up for one final shattering loss, the loss that would finally break him beyond repair. There would be no smiling child to pull him from the depths of hell this time. That child was gone. Dead because he'd foolishly overestimated the boy's abilities while underestimating those of the enemy.

He should have trained Naruto better. He should have spent hours and hours and hours drilling anything and everything he could think of into the boy's thick skull despite the fact that he'd discovered that the boy was too painful to look at up close. What had seemed like a cheerfully sunny smile from the distance had really been a mask to cover loneliness and despair much as it had been on Obito. Like Obito, Naruto had been far too kind, and the people around him who should have been nurturing that kindness had ruthlessly stomped on it. Seeing Kushina and Minato's features coupled with Obito's "I'm fine despite the fact that everyone's trying to tear off a piece of me including you" smile had almost been too much.

On that final mission that should have been a C-rank, he had been confident that he would be able to handle anything that came along before it hurt his Genin. He had foolishly continued forward into danger that was beyond his team's ability to handle, believing in that stupid Sharingan Kakashi the Copy-nin hype, and believing himself to be invincible. He should have taken Naruto's poisoning as the warning it was and turned back while it was still a B-rank.

Instead of ruthlessly training his team in the six days they'd been given, correcting his students from the sidelines until he recovered enough to take an active role in their training like he should have, he'd decided to go easy on them and teach them a simple Chakra control exercise while he recovered and got back on his feet. A Chakra control exercise that was worse than useless for someone like Naruto who should have had something else drilled into his head, anything else.

He should have known that Naruto wouldn't stay in bed recovering when his team might be in danger, and that while he had a good mind for tactics when it came to those amazing pranks he'd pulled, he somehow hadn't yet integrated it fully into his life as a ninja. That plan that had freed him from Momochi Zabuza's water prison had shown a glimpse of how brilliant Naruto could have been if he had been given the chance. That bright spark of brilliance was gone now, forever lost as one of the people who should have lived had died while hundreds who should be dead, such as him, still lived.

He had rather foolishly believed that Sasuke and Naruto would be able to handle Zabuza's accomplice despite the fact that the boy had proven himself more than Sasuke's match. He had been mistaken. Fatally so. After the battle had ended, and the enemy had either fled or died, he had learned that the one who was closest to his heart amongst those who were still living was no longer amongst the living.

He still didn't know how he found the strength to not completely break down on the bridge there and then. He still didn't know how he'd managed to get Naruto to the accursed bridge builder's house. He still didn't know how he'd managed to seal Naruto in that scroll that should never have been used. But, he had done all those things and more.

He had left the bridge builder's daughter and grandson alive since Naruto had gone through so much trouble to save them, but before he'd left, he'd left a little surprise for that lying snake Tazuna. Naruto would more than likely have been horrified over what he'd done, but he didn't care at the moment.

After all of the bodies but one had been buried, he and his remaining Genin had eventually made their way to Konoha's gates. The journey there had been eerily reminiscent of the one he'd taken back to the village after his first team had died, and the one that had been taken back to the village when Obito had died. This time however, he was the sensei, and there was nobody there to comfort him and tell him that the world wasn't ending.

That was a lie though. His world had ended with Naruto's life.

When they had reached Konoha, the Sandaime gave Naruto in death the one thing he had dreamed of attaining almost his entire life. Naruto had been named Hokage. Whether or not Minato-sensei had really named the boy his successor when he died was immaterial. As far as the history books would be concerned, Naruto was and had always been Godaime Hokage of Konoha.

After the return to Konoha, he barely managed to make it through Naruto's funeral. In fact, he'd barely managed to make it to the boy's funeral. He'd shown up on time, because there was no way he'd show up late to something that important, but he almost hadn't decided to show up at all. Pulling himself out of bed that day had been a near Herculean effort.

While he was at the funeral, he'd almost sworn he'd seen Itachi who had been happiest when he had been guarding Naruto back while he was in the ANBU, back before he'd gone insane and killed his clan. The person who might have been the boy who was now a man had been amongst the strange crowd in black cloaks who had seemingly shown up out of nowhere, and caused quite the panic behind the scenes as people tried to figure out who they were. He'd considered confronting the person who may have been Itachi but, Naruto's funeral hadn't been the time or the place, and the man who looked so much like a certain boy who had once been under his command had vanished almost immediately afterward.

After the funeral...After the funeral, the other Jounin who'd been given teams of their own as well as others who considered themselves to be his friends for whatever reason had taken it upon themselves to make a nuisance of themselves by constantly stopping by to check and see that he was still alive, and that he hadn't offed himself while they were away.

He hadn't. He was waiting for a particular day, a certain anniversary. The anniversary of the day he should have died. That anniversary had come today. He was done. There was no more reason to stay in this world, and he wasn't going to hang around for years waiting for something good to come along only to get taken away again. No matter what Gai said, what everyone else said as they tried to cheer him up, tried to pull him out of this final death spiral, he couldn't take anymore, wouldn't take anymore.

He summoned Pakkun and ordered him to take the summoning contract for his pack of Ninken to someone who was trustworthy enough to use it. After Pakkun had departed, he pulled out something he'd picked up off of a dead puppet wielder during a mission to Suna. It was slow acting enough that it would give Pakkun time to find someone to take up the contract and care for his pack, and not leave too much of a mess behind for the others to clean up since he was sure they would drop by either later today or tomorrow.

Three drops in his sake and it would all be over...

**Edited 12-2-12**


	4. The Hokages

Minato smirked as he watched the half of the Kyuubi that had been left in the living world integrate with the half that he had brought with him into death. He had no idea how much time had passed in the outside world, sometimes it felt like forever since he'd been devoured by the Shinigami, and sometimes it felt like no time at all. Despite the fact that it would make the creature stronger, this had been the best thing he'd ever seen in this place where he would fight the Kyuubi for all eternity as it meant that the Kyuubi would never again threaten the world of the living.

There had been a method to his madness when he'd pulled half of the Kyuubi into the Shinigami's stomach with him, and this had been it. He'd heard stories about Biju going off and reforming after their hosts had died, and in a stroke of either brilliance or insanity had come up with a means of dealing with that, and that had been to bring the creature to a place from which it could not return.

The Kyuubi would be getting the shock of its life when it finished reforming right here in the Shinigami's stomach.

The smirk quickly died a sudden and violent death when he finally realized what the Kyuubi's re-integration meant. His son, his little Naruto whom he'd never got to see grow up was dead. Hopefully, his son's death had been after a long life in which the boy had given him dozens of grandchildren and had lived to see the births of his great-great-grandchildren and had died at a ripe old age, but he had the distinct feeling that it was not so.

"How long have I been in here?" he asked, knowing he most likely wouldn't get an answer.

"Twelve and a half of your years." said a voice that sounded somewhat smug, as if it had had the last laugh.

It had. The Kyuubi had indeed had the last laugh. Twelve and a half years. Only twelve and a half years before his little Naruto's life was cut short and odds were that the boy hadn't seen that small piece of him he'd left in his seal since the seal had more than likely been almost fully intact at the time of his death. His boy had gone to the afterlife unknowing of his love for him if the Kyuubi's taunts were to be believed.

His boy was gone. He had died never knowing who his parents were and that they'd loved him, and his final wishes for his son had gone unfulfilled.

* * *

In the world of the living, the Sandaime sighed as he read Naruto's autopsy report. The boy who'd survived any number of amazingly stupid stunts as a small child and had come out completely uninjured after a night of rest had somehow been killed by a bunch of needles. Needles that had been thrown very accurately at just about every point of Naruto's body, but needles nonetheless. One of the senbon had punctured the aorta and another had gone directly into Naruto's heart.

The Medic who had examined Naruto's body before the funeral, the medic who had also been the one who had patched the boy up any number of times after he'd done something stupid like tie a towel around his neck and jump off the roof of his apartment building, had theorized that the reason that Naruto had died from these wounds had been because the weapons had still been in the boy at the time of death, preventing his regenerative abilities from taking effect. The medic had noted that something similar had happened on a lesser scale when Naruto had accidentally stabbed a kunai through his hand when he was three. The wound hadn't started to heal until after the Kunai had been removed. By that point, the boy had been nearly unconscious due to the pain and the blood loss.

Danzo had warned him. Danzo had warned him that something like this would happen numerous times when he'd requested permission to train the boy, and he'd ignored his old friend and rival again and again, believing that the man had been deliberately exaggerating things to get his way like he'd done when they were children, and numerous times since then. He should have listened to his old friend. He should have known that Danzo had the right of it this time. The man had had people watching Naruto practically since the moment he'd been born.

The main reason he had refused his old friend's offer of training for the boy every time had been because he'd known that Danzo would have tried to turn Naruto into into a weapon. Had he accepted Danzo's final offer which had been something of a compromise that he'd believed to be a trap, Naruto would still be alive today.

He'd been a total fool, and it had been a child, a child who could have easily surpassed him if he'd been given a chance, who had paid the price.

* * *

Somewhere in the afterlife, Senju Hashirama sighed as he waited. He'd been informed that a Hokage had come through recently, and that he would be dropping by to see him any minute now. He had honestly thought that Sarutobi would have come to see his senseis before now rather than having spent the last several days wading through the crowd of friends, relatives, and ancestors that generally showed up to greet one. He himself would have shown up on the day his and his brother's student had finally passed, but he hadn't gotten the memo about Sarutobi's death.

He remembered his own first day in the afterlife. Friends and relatives - including some he hadn't met before in his life - had shown up to greet him and give him information they thought he might want to know. In all honesty, he hadn't wanted to learn that his beloved and half-remembered grandfather had been reincarnated as a woman who was at that time involved in a polyandrous relationship with three men and an Inuzuka dog. Meeting him, er her, when she came through last year with stories of about fifteen kids, about two dozen grandkids, and about fifty great-grandkids had been quite the experience. An experience he didn't care to repeat, but an experience nonetheless.

After waiting for what seemed like forever, but was quite likely little to no time at all he saw something on the horizon. What it was didn't turn out to be his and his brother's student Sarutobi. It was that red haired girl that hung around Mito and a small blond boy who looked a great deal like her instead.

"I don't have time for what you have planned today." he told the girl whose name he was reasonably certain was either "Kushina" or "Habanero". "I'm waiting for someone."

"And, he's right here." Mito's young cousin or whatever said. "I'd like you to meet my son, Uzumaki Naruto Godaime Hokage of Konoha."

Had he still been alive, he would have choked or something. He'd heard that Sarutobi had retired before, but to be so desperate to retire again as to hand his hat off to a child that could not have survived more than a week in office...

Sarutobi's successor was around the same age that Sarutobi had been when he and his brother had informed him that he would become Hokage after them, but Sarutobi had had a good seven or eight more years before he'd actually taken the position after Tobirama had nobly sacrificed himself so his little students and that other team could get away.

The Uzumaki boy who vaguely looked like he could be related to his Mito looked startled by his mother's announcement for some strange reason.

"I'm what? !" the boy yelled.

"We decided to keep it a surprise until now after we found out." the boy's mother said. "The Sandaime announced your position to the world when your body was brought back to Konoha."

That caused him to blink a moment.

"No fair!" the boy yelled. "I never even got to wear that cool hat!"

Cool hat? Cool hat? He'd hated that hat. He was certain that Madara had designed the thing as well as the robes which were in the colors of the Uchiha clan symbol in order to make him look like a complete dork. It was even more embarrassing when the Kages of the other villages who had decided to follow his and Madara's example had adopted similar dress, thinking that it was supposed to be the start of a new tradition for all of the villages rather than just Konoha.

While the "Godaime Hokage" ranted about the unfairness of being declared Hokage after he was dead, Tobirama showed up to ask him something.

"Ah good, just the person I had been planning on talking to next." the Uzumaki boy's mother said when Tobirama arrived, cutting across her son's rather creative and colorful rant.

"What about?" Tobirama asked as he eyed the woman and the young boy who was yelling something about not having gotten to stamp papers.

"I would like you to meet my son, the Godaime." the boy's mother said.

"Man, I heard that Kirigakure was hard up and in a bad way, but..." Tobirama said as he looked the boy whose yelling had turned to whining over.

"Not the Godaime Mizukage, the Godaime Hokage." the boy's mother said, looking affronted on her son's behalf.

"THE WHAT?"

**Edited 12-3-12**


	5. Rogue's Gallery

At Uzumaki Naruto's funeral, Itachi had stood and silently watched as the funerary rites were carried out. He'd taken a big risk coming to Konoha, having headed to the village as soon as the first whispers of the boy's death had reached him. He had come here in order to pay his respects, and if necessary, steal the boy's body away and give him a proper burial somewhere where he was reasonably certain the child's grave wouldn't be desecrated. He hadn't been blind, he hadn't been stupid, and he'd known what Naruto was from the first time he had been assigned to babysit the attention-starved child back when he'd been a Genin. The Yondaime had been kind to him, and he'd personally liked Naruto. Attending the boy's funeral was the least he could do for him.

* * *

Close to Itachi, Kisame had squirmed uncomfortably as he stood in the large crowd that had turned out for the funeral of the "Godaime Hokage". He'd followed Itachi to Konoha wondering what the hell his partner was doing, and praying that Itachi wouldn't betray the Akatsuki, wouldn't betray him, and vaguely hoping for a good fight. Instead of a glorious battle, he found himself attending the funeral of the Jinchurriki that he and Itachi had previously been assigned to capture in a few months time when the statue was finally ready. Oddly enough, he and Itachi weren't the only Akatsuki in attendance. "Leader" was there in three of his bodies, as was the blue haired woman Konan.

He couldn't think of why they would be here. Had they come to make sure that their plans hadn't been discovered and this wasn't a ruse, or had they come for some other reason that wasn't related to the Akatsuki?

Itachi who had calmly killed his clan in cold blood had oddly enough looked as if he regretted the fact that the Jinchurriki had died, and not because it screwed with the Akatsuki's plans either.

* * *

A short distance away from Kisame, three of the paths of Pein stood in respectful silence as the funeral they had hastily raced from Ame to attend droned on. As they listened to the eulogy, they hoped that there wouldn't be the sort of trouble over his presence that led to the destruction of Konoha as that would completely ruin the plans he'd been working on for well over a decade when he was so close to his goal. There was enough of him here to deal with any trouble that might crop up however if something did happen.

Besides being something of a setback in their plans, as Madara had assured him that the Kyuubi would eventually reform elsewhere, Uzumaki Naruto's death had very slightly affected him personally. The boy had been something along the lines of a second cousin one generation removed or something like that, and he had attended the boy's funeral out of respect for his mother's clan and family, rather than out of any personal feelings for a boy that he frankly never knew. The more he heard about the boy, the more he regretted never meeting him however. He had a feeling that the kid would have gotten along well with Yahiko were they both alive.

* * *

Konan stood by Nagato's side - or rather the side of the portion of Nagato that was inhabiting Yahiko's body - looking at the crowd in disgust as the reason she was here was being interred. She'd heard enough about how Jinchurriki were treated to know that the grief of the "mourners" that had shown up for the funeral wasn't genuine. She hadn't known the person who the funeral was for, but she felt genuine grief, if only over the loss of a life that had only just begun. It wasn't much, but it was there.

* * *

The one who called himself Uchiha Madara, and currently called himself Tobi sat in a tree near the area where "Namikaze Naruto"'s funeral was being held. He didn't plan on starting any trouble today, as it would cause a further kink in his plans at this critical junction. Not only that, but he wouldn't hear the end of it from Itachi if he did.

He had come mostly out of respect for the boy's father. Namikaze Minato had been a good sensei back before everything back before Rin... Minato's son had earned a measure of respect from him however. Most people wouldn't fight to the death for the sake of strangers and a place that wasn't their home, even the sacrifice he himself had almost made had been for a comrade. For that, he could respect his sensei's son, and when he and Madara found a way to destroy this hell that he currently lived in, he would do everything he could to bring the boy back and make him happy as he should have been.

* * *

In another area of the crowd Danzo sighed as he watched the funeral. The current head of the Uchiha Clan, who was only a small boy, due to the sins of his father and the rest of his adult relatives for that matter, clearly had little to no idea what he was doing. For the majority of the mourners, it was not the Uzumaki boy's passing that they were regretful about, it was the fact that they'd abused the son of the Yondaime in their own little ways.

Very few of those here would truly miss the Uzumaki boy now that he was gone. Everyone else would be missing "Namikaze Naruto" and what he could have been with a father such as Namikaze Minato, especially considering the promise he'd been showing which they'd been determinedly ignoring right up to the end. For the majority of the village, there wouldn't be grief, there would be guilt, guilt over the fact that they hadn't stopped and noticed the Yondaime's hair and eyes when they stopped to stare and make cutting remarks, guilt that they hadn't seen the son of their savior when they threw him out of their shops for merely looking, guilt that they hadn't realized exactly who the boy was until it was far too late.

Though nobody would believe it, he was one of the few that would truly miss the Uzumaki boy.

One of the reasons that he'd wanted to turn the boy into what he was - a weapon - had been because he knew that it would be better if the child never knew what he was missing and would miss for his entire life. He had seen how the other Jinchurriki had been treated in the villages across the Elemental Countries. He had seen how Mito-sama had been subtly and not-so-subtly shunned after she'd taken the Kyuubi into herself. Naruto's own mother had had few real friends while she'd lived in Konoha, and she'd gained those after years of struggle.

He had known that Naruto would receive more of the same, or worse since the boy's mother's failure to contain that which she imprisoned could arguably be considered to have been the reason Naruto had been needed for his role.

Sarutobi wouldn't listen to him however. Only hearing the word "Weapon", he'd rejected him out of hand without stopping to consider why it might have been best for the boy. Sarutobi had rejected his request as a small child sobbed over the fact that he was alone, something the child would have not noticed at all had he had his way. Sarutobi had rejected his request as the boy started wearing the color of the creature he contained and pulling pranks that further cemented the connection between container and contained in the minds of the villagers, something he would never have allowed. Sarutobi had rejected his request as the pranks the boy pulled became even more worrisome, something he would have nipped in the bud before they even started.

Sarutobi had continued rejecting his request when it became obvious that the team that the boy had been put on was heading towards total meltdown as the Uchiha showed signs of serious instability, the Haruno showed signs of a mental illness that had somehow slipped past the Academy's intake evaluation, and the Hatake showed little to no real interest in his students, and made little to no effort at going through the motions of being an instructor. Had the Uzumaki boy survived what had supposed to have been his first C-rank mission, which had been given to the team because Sarutobi had chosen to indulge the boy, the team would have undoubtedly either exploded or imploded in a rather spectacular manner before the year was out. If he'd been given his way, the boy would have been placed on a far more stable team that would have been able to work together as a perfect unit.

Now, after a lifetime of standing outside and looking in and pretending he was on the inside the boy was gone. The boy who had grown up without love - if he had his way, the boy would never have experienced the pain of growing up without it since he wouldn't have known what it was in the first place -, the boy who had been so desperate for attention that he pulled the sort of stunt that would have had anyone else hauled off to the T&I department before the first brushstroke was complete was gone. The Uzumaki child was gone, and all he could think as he gazed out over a crowd of "mourners" which included one Uchiha Itachi was "If only..."

He kept thinking that from time to time over the weeks and months that followed.

**Edited 12-3-12**


	6. Konohamaru and Ebisu

As Konohamaru nursed the bruises that he'd gotten from that jerk from Suna who he'd accidentally run into when he'd ran away from that pink haired girl who had had a meltdown of some sort and completely freaked out after he'd said his boss's name, he thought that if his boss were here, he would have saved him. His boss had always been awesome like that. His boss was gone now though, and he wouldn't be there to teach him neat stuff, or play ninja with him and his friends, or have an epic fight over The Hat with him when his grandpa finally retired again.

Ever since his boss had died a hero who had saved a country from an evil tyrant, he had tried to live each day as he believed his boss would have done if he were still here. He'd pulled a number of pranks the way his boss used to, but none of them had been nearly as epic as the boss's. He still couldn't figure out how his boss had managed to paint the Hokage Monument in broad daylight without anyone noticing, since every time he had tried to do so in memory of his boss, he'd been caught but, his boss had been cool like that. One day, he would become Hokage like his boss and his grandpa were, and he would become the best Hokage ever, even though it would be very hard to be a better Hokage than his boss.

He didn't mind admitting that he'd cried at the boss's funeral. Unlike most of the jerks there, he'd actually known and cared about the boss, not that Namikaze Naruto person that the entire village was talking and crying about. His boss was and always would be Uzumaki Naruto, the first person who hadn't cared about the fact that he was the Hokage's grandson, the first person to acknowledge him for who he was rather than who his grandfather was, the first person to call him Konohamaru rather than Honored Grandson.

If he could become even half the person, half the ninja his boss had been before he died, he would be proud.

* * *

Ebisu sighed as he gathered up his student who had a black eye, a split lip, and a bloody nose. The boy had been getting into a great deal of trouble since the Uzumaki boy had died and this was just the latest in a long string of incidents. About the only people Konohamaru didn't prank these days were Umino Iruka and the Hokage. Everyone else was fair game as far as the boy was concerned and whatever prank it was that he'd pulled on the foreign shinobi had apparently not gone very well.

Konohamaru had been rather angry after the Uzumaki boy's death, angry not only at the people who had caused it, but also at the villagers who had not appreciated the Uzumaki boy while he was alive. He himself had rather unfortunately counted amongst that number for a very long time until the day the boy whom he'd seen as the demon he'd contained had inspired Konohamaru to do better. It was this anger at the villagers more than his desire to emulate his role model that had driven Konohamaru's pranking tendencies after the Uzumaki's death, and it was starting to become rather worrisome.

As well as becoming a troublemaker, Konohamaru had become very driven as a student over the last several months. He would be lying to himself if he said his teaching was the cause but, it hadn't been his teaching that had brought change about in his student. His student's increased drive to excel had been caused by Uzumaki Naruto. The Uzumaki had inspired Konohamaru, and continued to inspire him even after his passing.

Before the Uzumaki boy's death, Konohamaru had seen the Uzumaki as a rival for the position of Hokage. After the Uzumaki's death, Konohamaru worked hard to become as "great" as the Uzumaki had been.

There was no denying that the Uzumaki boy had been great in his own way. The boy had persevered through any number of setbacks determined to rise above everyone and to protect Konoha despite the treatment he'd received at the hands of the villagers. He had inspired a number of people to do and be better than they were, had unflinchingly faced a Jounin to rescue his sensei despite the fact that he was a mere Genin, and had gone to his death in the service of Konoha and in order to help free a nation that was being oppressed, not caring about the odds that had been against him.

The Uzumaki that everyone was now calling Namikaze after his father hadn't faced down a horde of S ranked ninja or single-handedly won a battle against a force that outnumbered him a hundred to one, or a million other things such as single-handedly creating a forest where there had been flatlands, but he had possessed many of the qualities that had made the Hokages who had passed before him great, and would have been just as great as they had been had he had more time to live. Though many didn't quite see it, and now only saw who his father had been when they thought about him, the Uzumaki boy had been deserving of the title of Godaime Hokage. It was a pity that it had only been given to him when it was far too late for him to have been able to have made it great.

**Edited 12-3-12**


	7. Team 10

As Asuma at Kurenai's side in front of his father and Hokage, nominating his team for the Chunin Exams more to show his students what they were up against so they would know how much they would need to improve before they finally earned their promotion than out of a belief that they would succeed, he was acutely aware of the empty space where a Jounin Instructor should have been. There were two rookie instructors where there should have been three. After the Godaime fell, so to did Team 7. Namikaze Naruto had been the glue that had held that otherwise broken team together.

The civilian child who had no ideas of the realities of Shinobi life and who had thought it all a game in which she could win the heart of the last of the Uchiha and live happily ever after - much as is own female student had - had had a brutal wake-up call that had caused her to turn her hitai-ate in and start attending a civilian school. Following the death of his teammate and his other theammate's departure, the Uchiha had completely closed himself off, and refused to interact with his new team more than he had to. And as for Hatake Kakashi...

As for Hatake Kakashi, his student's death had been one blow too many. He had followed the boy soon after, on the anniversary of Uchiha Obito's death.

As he nominated his team, he looked over at Umino Iruka, the instructor who had trained this year's rookie teams in the Academy. The man was morose, and he suspected he knew why. Namikaze Naruto who had been a favorite student of his had been the first of his students to die, and if the man continued to teach, would be the first of many.

* * *

In the room in which the first phase of the Chunin Exams was to take place, Akimichi Chouji found his eyes involuntarily drifting over towards where Uchiha Sasuke was located. He was scared of the other boy. He'd been a little scared of the other boy for years, ever since he'd undergone a complete personality change after the Uchiha Massacre, but he was frightened of him now.

After Naruto died, Team 7 had fallen apart, and Sasuke had been put on a more experienced team that had lost a member on a C-ranked mission themselves. Since then, he had become harder, and much colder than that boy he'd spent years with back at the Academy. When he ran into people he knew, such as his classmates, he didn't even so much as greet them. The only people Sasuke actually talked to recently was his fangirls, but that had been to yell at them as he threw weapons at them in order to make them leave him alone.

Right now, Uchiha Sasuke was someone he most definitely didn't want to run into in a dark alley or worse, on the other side of a battlefield.

* * *

Trailing slightly behind Chouji, Ino bit her lip nervously as she looked about the room that contained what seemed like hundreds of ninja who were bigger and stronger than her. Konoha's rookie teams had been nominated for the Chunin Exams, and she was on one of them. As she listened to Chouji greet Kiba and joke about eating Akamaru, she felt as if there was something missing.

She knew what it was. It was Team 7. Her former best friend and rival for Sasuke's heart wasn't there for her to compete with. Without her there trying to shove her aside or rub her nose in the fact that Sasuke was on her team, seeing Sasuke was different somehow, not quite as enjoyable as it used to be.

Things had gone very badly for Sakura. First, she'd seen her teammate die in front of her. Then, her sensei had committed suicide. After that had happened, she hadn't entirely recovered. Her friend had quit being a Kunoichi, and wasn't thriving as a civilian. She'd heard that her friend had had severe disciplinary problems at the school her parents had sent her to, and that she might get expelled.

She didn't know what she'd do if she'd lost Chouji, Shikamaru, or Asuma-sensei. She'd probably end up being just as bad as Sakura. After seeing what had happened to Team 7, there were some mornings after a particularly bad nightmare that she found herself racing to Chouji and Shikamaru's houses to make sure that they were still alive.

* * *

Behind Ino, Shikamaru looked around the room, noting his team's behavior as well as that of everyone else. There was an element missing from this situation, and that element was Team 7. More importantly, the random element on Team 7, Naruto, wasn't here. While he could predict what Naruto would have done in this situation to a degree, there had always been something about the boy that defied accurate prediction.

Now should have been the moment when Naruto had sensed the pressure that was on him and yelled something defiant though. The more you tried to push Naruto down, the more determined he became to rise. There was no defiant yell to break the tension in the room and distract everyone from the upcoming exam however, and there never would be because there was no Naruto to give it.

The tension in the room increased as the exam started, and built as it progressed. By the time that it was time to receive the tenth question, you could practically cut it with a knife. Naruto would have refused to give in to the pressure and yelled something defiant here as well, inspiring others to continue much as he had once done without realizing it during a particularly brutal lesson back at the Academy.

He was not Naruto.

He raised his hand, and Team 10 failed.

**Edited 12-3-12**


	8. Sasuke and Orochimaru

When Uchiha Sasuke went into the Forest of Death, it had been with a pair of complete strangers by his side rather than people he had known since he was seven. Neither of them were people he had cared for, and who had cared for him in return, the way his former teammates had done even though one of them constantly refused to admit it.

Had Sasuke ever bothered to care enough to do so, the entire team would have constantly argued over every decision since there was no clear leader. The one who had been the glue of the team before Sasuke's arrival had been permanently disabled and forced out of the Ninja program after a lucky strike from a now dead bandit. That person who almost always took point, and raced headlong into danger had been the leader, which had left a vacuum, and in turn a power struggle. Neither of Sasuke's two teammates would have accepted him as the leader because he was a couple of years younger than them, and Sasuke himself didn't care to take the position because he was too busy trying to get strong enough to take on his brother and didn't have the time to deal with the bickering of a pair of unwanted teammates. As a result, Sasuke's two teammates constantly argued, while Sasuke went off and did his own thing.

The only reason that that particular team was even in the exams in the first place was because their Sensei had finally gotten tired of dealing with them, and if one of them died or got promoted, he could pawn the rest of them off on someone else.

This complete lack of cohesion in Sasuke's new team made Team 7 seem like a nicely balanced team in comparison.

Without Team 7 at his back, Sasuke had gone into the forest with what could only nominally have been considered a team, two-thirds of which constantly argued about everything, and never attempted to endear itself to the boy just as he never attempted to endear himself to them. When Orochimaru attacked, there had been nobody he viewed as worth risking his life for to save, and there had been nobody to risk their lives to save him. His teammates had run off at the first sign that their opponent was too much for them to handle, arguing the entire time, only retrieving him after Orochimaru left since they needed three people to pass that portion of the Exams.

As Sasuke lay battling with the seal that Orochimaru had given him that night, there was nobody there to love and care for him and to anchor him to the world. Sakura was gone, trying and failing to be a civilian, since she couldn't make it as a ninja and there was no Dobe there for him to protect and to protect him in turn, and yell at him as he did so. Naruto had died. All he had left was revenge.

Revenge wasn't enough.

He, like the nine others who had been given seals alongside Mitarashi Anko years earlier, gave up the fight and succumbed. At dawn, the danger the team he hadn't really cared for was in failed to wake him, and rather than rescuing his teammates from the Genin from Sound who had attacked in order to test his strength, he breathed his last.

* * *

Orochimaru scowled as he received Kabuto's report, and threw something breakable at the wall when his loyal follower and spy departed. Uchiha Sasuke had proven to be far weaker than his older brother, and a complete waste of a seal. Instead of rising to the occasion as Itachi would have done, the boy had proven himself a weakling, and succumbed like nine-tenths of the idiots he'd given that seal to had done before him.

While he would have loved to have the boy's eyes, this particular setback wasn't vital to his plans. The signal for the invasion was still a smoke bomb going off in the Kage's box at the third phase of the Chunin Exams. While it wouldn't be happening after the Uchiha's nonexistent fight, it would be happening.

Soon, his former sensei would die, and Konoha would fall.

**Edited 12-3-12**


	9. Team 8

Yuuhi Kurenai looked around the small arena that was located at the base of the tower in the Forest of Death taking note of all of the Genin that were here but paying especial attention to her students. Just enough teams had passed for there to be a preliminary round prior to the third phase of the Chunin Exam, and as she looked at who was there, she also reflected on who was missing.

Team 10 had failed in the first round of the Exam, so Asuma wasn't there for her to talk with, and wasn't there to cheer her students on as she cheered his on. Team 7 had never even made it to the Exam, and three of its four members were already dead, with the fourth looking to follow them soon if what she'd heard about the Haruno girl's reaction to the news of the Uchiha boy's passing was true. The news of Uchiha Sasuke's demise in the Forest of Death had hit her team hard when they heard it since the Uchiha boy had been the second of their classmates to die.

When she'd heard the news, she had wanted to take time out to comfort her students over their most recent loss, but there had been no time to do so. She would have to wait until the preliminaries were over to make that time, and she would make sure to take as much time as her students needed. As what had happened to Team 7 had clearly illustrated, you never knew who you were going to lose next or when.

Of the rookie teams that had formed this year, hers had been the only one to make it through to this point, and right now she wasn't too certain that they would progress to the third phase of the Exams.

* * *

In the Arena below where the Genin who would be participating in the preliminaries stood watching with their senseis, Inuzuka Kiba grinned victoriously as he looked down at his fallen opponent. Akado Yoroi may have been larger than him, older than him, more experienced than him, and able to absorb Chakra, but he'd had an advantage throughout the entire fight. Akamaru.

It had been a two-on-one battle with the odds firmly in his favor. The only way this fight could have been any easier would have been if he'd been up against Naruto...

He felt a stab in his chest as he remembered that Naruto was gone.

The boy who he'd cut class with on occasion, the boy who he'd sometimes gotten into trouble with, the boy who had yapped at his heels, constantly insisting that he was stronger than him, the boy who had helped him teach Akamaru the Dynamic Marking technique as part of a prank was gone, and he would not be coming back. He would never be able to brag about this fight to a jealous Naruto. He would never be able to hold this win and the fact that he was passing on to the third phase of the Exams over Naruto's head. There would be no wild scrap with Naruto after the boy launched himself at him after having had enough of his teasing. Naruto was dead.

He was no longer smiling as he reached the balcony to watch the rest of the fights.

* * *

Shino asked why his teammate was so unhappy after advancing, and his teammate clammed up. There was only one subject that was not spoken of for the sake of harmony in Team 8, and that subject was Naruto. Hinata had gone into mourning over the boy's death, and any mention of him had a detrimental effect on her.

As he headed down to his own fight, he wondered how and why Kiba's opponent had reminded the other boy of their deceased classmate. The man who was in his early twenties had been completely unlike the brash child who had constantly disrupted the harmony of their class in a way that wasn't entirely negative.

Deciding to focus on that later, he turned his mind towards the battle that was ahead. While he missed his loud former classmate in his own way, he could not allow that to distract him from the task that was ahead.

* * *

Hinata was in tears by the time her fight was over. It hadn't even been a fight, she had given up before the first blow had landed. She had always known she was weak, and this was further proof of it. Neji was right to despise her. Her family was right to disregard her. She was weak, and she and everyone else knew it.

She had once tried to be strong. There had been a time when she had been willing to pick herself back up and try again, but that time was over. It had ended when Naruto had died. She had loved Naruto and had wanted to be like him. Naruto, despite being a failure at almost everything, had been strong. He had never given up no matter what, and wouldn't let anybody keep him down. Every time Naruto fell, he would jump back up again, increasingly determined to rise higher.

One time, Naruto fell and couldn't get back up again, and that had only been because he was dead. Had Naruto not died, he would have gotten back up with his customary smile just as he always did, dusted himself off, and tried again. But, Naruto was dead, and there was no getting back up from that.

Without Naruto there as an example and a reminder, without Naruto there to constantly strengthen her resolve, she found fewer and fewer reasons to rise each time she fell. In the days and weeks and months following Naruto's death she had weakened even further, feeling what little strength and determination she had gathered over the years slip away with each passing day until there was nothing left. Today, she had fallen without even trying to rise. She had given in without trying to land a single blow. Each one of her cousin's words had cut into her because they had all been true.

She had fallen for the last time. There was no getting back up from this.

**Edited 12-3-12**


	10. Team 9

Maito Gai knew that he should be at the Arena in order to support Neji during his bouts in the Third Phase of the Chunin Exams, but he just didn't care at that moment. Neji had not been his favorite student. Far from it in fact, and the feeling seemed to have been mutual as far as Neji was concerned. Neji didn't care about anything or anyone.

He was frankly quite surprised that the boy had shown up to the funeral yesterday since Neji had barely tolerated Lee at the best of times.

At that moment, Gai found that he knew exactly how Kakashi had felt before the end. He didn't feel like he had the energy to crawl out of bed, much less make his way to the arena to cheer on his least favorite student. His most devoted student was gone and his Springtime of Youth was over. If it wouldn't have sparked a war, he would have torn that little red-haired motherfucker's head off at the first available opportunity.

When he heard the sounds of an invasion hours after Neji had been supposed to fight, he covered his head with his pillow, and did his best to tune it out. He knew that he should be out there fighting for Konoha right now, but he didn't feel like it. They could come by and arrest him for dereliction of duty later for all he cared.

* * *

In the afterlife, Rock Lee smiled nervously as he made his way to a certain group that was gathered around a blond boy who held everyone's attention, intent on a spar. A few days earlier, he had been laying in a drugged sleep in the hospital when he'd suddenly felt as if he were drowning in sand. There had been a very painful crushing sensation like when he'd lost the use of his arm and his leg, and then he'd found himself here where his honored ancestors had come to greet him.

He had spent a few days with his ancestors and other various family members including several cousins who had died during the Third Shinobi War and the Kyuubi attack before deciding to look for other people he had known in life, people he actually remembered. After a brief search, he found one of the people he was looking for sitting in the middle of a large group.

He would know the yellow hair of the Godaime Hokage anywhere.

Back when they'd been alive, he hadn't really known the boy who had been in the year below him, but he had briefly met him during the graduation exam when the boy had attempted to graduate from the Academy a year early. The other boy had been loud, disruptive, and stupid, but he hadn't picked on him the way the rest of his classmates had, and hadn't told him that he would fail like they had.

It wasn't the Godaime who he wanted to spar with however, it was the boy who was sitting next to him, chatting with him, and almost smiling as he did so. He and Uchiha Sasuke had never finished their fight, and despite the fact that he had passed on, he still wanted to see how a genius of hard work fared against a natural born genius.

* * *

From where he stood in the world of the living, Hyuuga Neji hadn't particularly cared either way when he'd heard that his cousin Hinata had been kidnapped. The clan had another potential heiress so, as far as he was concerned, it hadn't been too big of a loss. Rather than concerning himself with his failure of a cousin, he concerned himself with the invasion that was taking place around him.

Prior to the invasion, his fight during the first round of the tournament had gone well enough. He'd gone up against Inuzuka Kiba, and had smacked the brash loudmouth down in short order. There had been no second round however. There had been an invasion instead.

As he fought with several enemy ninja, he did not spare a single thought for his uncle and his grandfather who had both gone off to retrieve his cousin.

* * *

Tenten stood alone.

Tenten stood alone and she knew it. She cared for her teammates, but Lee was gone, Gai was in mourning and nowhere to be found, and Neji didn't return her regard. She was still willing to have Neji's back should he need her, but Neji had wandered off somewhere and she had a group of the enemy to deal with herself.

Tenten fought alone.

There was nobody to have Tenten's back. Neji was fighting his own battles in the distance. Lee was gone. Gai was nowhere to be found, and just about every other ninja was out helping repel the invasion just as she was. That didn't stop her however. Her weapons flew across the battlefield felling enemy ninja left and right. Her Twin Rising Dragons rained death down upon the unwary.

Tenten died alone.

A lucky strike got through, and Tenten dropped from the sky. Everyone around her was too busy to come to her aid, or to comfort her as she breathed her last. It was as her final breath left her body that the call for retreat sounded and the invading forces left Konoha to the grim task of picking up the fallen and rebuilding.

After Tenten died, she wasn't alone.

Lee had been amongst the first to greet her. In fact, he had outrun her family in order to reach her side the instant she awoke to find herself in the Afterlife. As Lee hugged her, happy to see her, but sad that she'd died in order for him to do so, her family came up and surrounded her.

**Edited 12-3-12**


	11. The Team From Suna

Kankuro didn't know how he felt about his brother's death. On the one hand he'd been frightened of the younger boy ever since he'd first encountered him, and on the other, he had been his brother, his flesh and blood, the third child born to a mother he didn't remember. A mother he didn't remember because she had died giving birth to Gaara.

Gaara had fallen honorably in battle, so technically he should honor that loss, but Gaara had been insane and would have been just as likely to kill everyone in Suna as to fight for the village they called home.

In the end, when all was said and done and all angles had been considered, Kankuro settled on relief that Gaara's constant death threats no longer hung over his head.

* * *

Temari had lost two members of her family, and she didn't know exactly how she felt about either loss much as she hadn't known how she felt for her brother and her father back when they'd been alive. The Kazekage hadn't exactly been a loving father, and it had been on his orders that the one-tailed Biju had been sealed into her brother, resulting in the death of her mother.

While she felt saddened by the idea of the death of her brother, she didn't exactly mourn Gaara's passing. He had frightened her. He had threatened to kill her any number of times, and unlike Kankuro who had made such threats in play, he had been completely serious.

With Kankuro as the only family member she had left, she vowed to stay close to him, and make sure nothing happened to him. If anyone tried to harm her brother, they would die.

* * *

Baki sighed when he got back to Suna to learn that the Kazekage was most definitely dead. While he didn't want to become Kazekage, and had never wanted to become one, he was the only person he trusted to take the position, especially since neither of the Kazekage's surviving children seemed to want it either.

* * *

As for Gaara...Gaara never knew that his life could have changed. How could he when the person who would have completely turned his life around after knocking him off of the road he was going down had died before he could even meet him?

When Gaara came to Konoha, there had been no Uzumaki Naruto trying to get his attention when he'd only had eyes for eliminating Uchiha Sasuke. There had been no Uzumaki Naruto to startle him during the first phase of the Chunin Exams when the obviously weak boy refused to give in to the pressure that was being put on him and give up, and had inspired the rest of the room to continue as well. There had been no Uzumaki Naruto to distract him during the preliminaries by making a bunch of noise and cheering his friends on, or catch his attention when he vowed to get revenge against an obviously much stronger opponent for the injury that had been caused to one of said friends. There had been no Uzumaki Naruto to delay him long enough for help to arrive at the hospital, and as a result the green clad boy who had been the first to actually get past his defenses and land a blow on him in his entire life had died. There had been no Uzumaki Naruto there to fight him for the sake of his village and his loved ones during the invasion, and show him a different path when he defeated him. There had been no Uzumaki Naruto to inspire him to walk down the new path and earn the love of his siblings and later his village.

There had been no Uzumaki Naruto period.

After he had killed the Genin Rock Lee, he had allowed himself to be taken to the local jail on charges of murder at Baki's urging. While it was a setback for the plan, it wasn't too bad of one, as there had been contingency put plans in place for if Gaara's homicidal tendencies had gotten him arrested before the third phase. When the time for the invasion came, Shukaku burst forth from the prison, killing all of Gaara's fellow inmates, before going on a rampage through Konoha.

When Gamabunta went up against Shukaku, it hadn't been Naruto on the massive toad's head leading the battle against the monster, it had been Jiraiya. Jiraiya who had heard about Shukaku's previous hosts and knew how to defeat him. Jiraiya who hadn't cared about what path Gaara had been walking in life and why, and only cared about the path Gaara's Biju had been intent upon trampling through Konoha. Jiraiya who was a legend for a reason, and knew several tricks for getting around the sand that had protected Gaara since the day he was born.

Gaara fell that day in Konoha, and there was nobody who cared enough for him three years later to bring his body back. There was nobody who cared for him enough three years later to give up their own life to bring him back from the dead. There was nobody who cared for him three years later, because there was no three years later for the boy.

Gaara's opponent this time was nowhere near as exhausted or merciful as Naruto would have been in the same situation.

Gaara fell, and he died.

Somewhere in the distance, Shukaku began to reform.

**Edited 12-3-12**


	12. Kisame and Itachi

Hoshigake Kisame started to worry about his partner, and for good reason too. Some sort of change had come over the quiet young man who had silently wandered by his side for the last few years letting him do most of the fighting the few times they'd found themselves in battle. That unsettling change in his partner's personality had started when he had attended his second funeral in Konoha at Itachi's side over a month earlier. Since then, Itachi hadn't seemed to care about the Akatsuki or his role in it in the apathetic way he used to. Now, he seemed intent on something else, something that surprised him considering who it was for.

Uchiha Itachi was intent on revenge.

When Itachi had raced back to Konoha to attend the funeral of the Kyuubi Jinchuriki, he'd almost been suspicious of his partner's motives, but when he'd gotten there it had been to discover that it was an Akatsuki event that he'd apparently not gotten the memo for. When Itachi had raced back to Konoha to attend the funeral of the Uchiha brat that he'd forgotten to kill, he'd been rather surprised, especially with what came after. Following Uchiha Sasuke's funeral, Itachi had started burning all of Orochimaru's bases to the ground one by one, torching the first almost the instant the funeral ended, apparently on a hunt for the snake who had once been a member of Akatsuki.

Completely unlike himself, the man who generally avoided killing if he didn't have to didn't bat an eye at all of the corpses he left in his wake. He didn't mind Itachi's quest for revenge too much since he'd gotten a few good fights out of the deal such as the one against the orange haired demon, but he was somewhat concerned for his partner. This was not like Itachi at all.

Itachi never went out of his way to get into fights.

But, Itachi was doing so now, and he was winning. It was amazing how well he was winning despite the fact that he went up against the whole of Otogakure practically by himself. It was almost as if he didn't care whether or not he lived or he died, and with the way he was popping soldier pills, as well as his illness, odds were that he wasn't going to live very much longer.

Eventually, even Otogakure itself was a ruin as well, and he and Itachi were back on the road because Itachi clearly hadn't found what he was looking for.

They found what Itachi was looking for in Tanzaku-gai. The battle between Itachi and Orochimaru was one of legends but unfortunately, he hadn't been able to see too much of it since he'd been stuck keeping some little pissant named Kabuto off of Itachi's back. He did see when Itachi brought out Susanoo and sealed Orochimaru away in his sake bottle sword whose name he forgot forever though.

As soon as Orochimaru was gone forever, Itachi dropped to the ground completely spent. His final words were "Tell Madara that I leave them to their fate.".

Kisame had been right to be worried about his partner. His partner had been intent on dying and he'd let him.

* * *

Itachi fidgeted nervously when he realized that there actually was an after and that he was in it. He should have guessed that there would be an afterlife since the Edo Tensei existed, but he hadn't really thought about that. He'd been too intent on waiting for Sasuke to be strong enough to kill him so he might stand a chance against Madara when the time came, and after Sasuke died, he'd been intent on getting his revenge against Orochimaru for his role in his brother's death.

He hadn't known that he'd had that in him until his precious and foolish little brother that he would have done anything to protect and had sold his soul more than once to protect had died...

Now, he was standing in a place where he'd expected nothingness to be, and a large number of people were staring at him. He felt distinctly uncomfortable and wished he could hide, especially since a large number of the people who were staring at him were Uchiha. Uchiha that he'd killed.

"Damn kid, I heard what you did, and I must say you've got balls." a Uchiha who looked like an older version of Sasuke said as he broke away from the group who were currently staring and muttering but hadn't yet attempted any violence.

"There's someone else that you might want to have a few words with now that you're here." the stranger who resembled his brother said.

"Who?" he asked.

The stranger pointed to a man who was standing well outside the group, a man he recognized from the pictures in his history textbook. Uchiha Madara. From the cold glances that the man was receiving from the other members of the group, it was clear that he wasn't well liked, not even by the clan members who had practically worshiped him in life.

If Madara was here, who was that he'd been dealing with when he was alive?

**Edited 12-3-12**


	13. Jiraiya and Tsunade

Tsunade had vowed never to return to Konoha. With no reason to not keep that vow, there was no reason for her to return to her former home despite the fact that Jiraiya had come to her and spent nearly a month begging her to do so. Eventually, even Jiraiya gave up and left her to what was left of her life. A life that had become even more depressing since she had been given a bit of hope only to have had it snatched away from her almost immediately.

Orochimaru had come to her with an offer that he'd been certain that she couldn't refuse. He'd offered to reward her with the two things she wanted most in the world if she'd just his arms which had been damaged by their former sensei during the invasion of Konoha. He had offered to bring back Dan and Nawaki, her fiancee and her little brother whose deaths had been the reason she had left Konoha after the Second War, taking Dan's niece Shizune with her. Before she could make her final decision, and before Orochimaru could fulfill that promise if she said yes, Uchiha Itachi came. Uchiha Itachi came and proved that he was stronger than Orochimaru when he'd defeated him on the field of battle less than an hour after Orochimaru had made his offer.

She couldn't make her displeasure at Itachi's actions known to the boy, because the brat had died almost immediately after he had completely destroyed her teammate who she still cared for despite the fact that he'd grown twisted and evil over the years and had done worse than betray Konoha since they had last seen each-other.

She had left Konoha, so it's not like the village's ultimate fate mattered to her. Learning that her former sensei had died had hurt, but she wasn't about to take up the hat herself. Every Hokage Konoha had had ended up dying in the service of the village, even her former sensei who had lived long enough to retire only to be dragged back to his post when his successor had sacrificed himself for the village. Even the little Godaime that she'd heard about who had never lived long enough to wear the hat had died in the service of Konoha. Becoming Rokudaime wouldn't be worth the trouble, and she wasn't about to die for a village that had taken everything from her.

All that there was left for her to live for was the open road with all its gambling halls and the mounting debts that came with them. It was a depressing existence that she didn't think was worth it at times, but it was all she knew anymore. Her brother was dead, her fiance was dead, her sensei was dead, and now one of her teammates was dead. The only person she had left was Shizune who she would keep by her side forever so Konoha couldn't take her too.

* * *

Back in Konoha, Jiraiya sighed as he looked down at the two councilors who stood beside him as he stood on the balcony of the Hokage tower in front of a cheering crowd who had come to greet their Rokudaime Hokage. There had been three of the old fogies, but Danzo had been found dead about a month before the invasion. The man's little group of ANBU would be integrated into the main shinobi force just as soon as they were deprogrammed since Konoha was seriously in need of more men.

He had never really wanted to become Hokage, and he knew he was a bad choice for the job, but since Tsunade had turned down the position, there was basically nobody left who could take it. Aside from a small pink haired girl who had recently been kicked out of a civilian school and sent to therapy in order to deal with the numerous problems she suffered due to the fact that she'd lost her entire team, he was all that was left of his sensei's teaching line, and being Hokage would help him with a pet project of his that he hadn't been able to get a start on since he'd been stuck chasing down rumors of Orochimaru and a possibly major action that his former and now deceased teammate had been planning, and because it wasn't priority anymore now that Konoha no longer had a Jinchuriki. That project was finding out where Nagato, Yahiko, and Konan were.

He had believed his former students were dead since the day he'd gotten the letter stating that they were so, but that belief had been turned on its ear after he had seen Yahiko and Konan who had been wearing Akatsuki uniforms at Minato's son's funeral. The fact that Yahiko, Konan, and two of the other men in the group had slashed Amegakure headbands were the only clues he had as to their location, but it wasn't much of one since they obviously weren't in Ame considering their obvious missing-nin status, and undoubtedly had Ame hunter-nin after them.

Getting information on where they might be however would be difficult since he didn't have very many, well actually any, informants in that country. After he'd heard rumors of Hanzo of the Salamander's death, he'd sent several toads through Ame, but they had all died before they could gather too much information, so he'd stopped sending them as the Toads would become rather irked with him if he started needlessly wasting their lives.

Perhaps a ninja who was trained in infiltration would fare better...

He came out of his pondering over how he would go about finding his beloved students that he had rather stupidly abandoned long ago as the cheering of the crowd began to sound slightly hoarse, turned away from the balcony and the cheering crowd below, and headed inside, stopping to glance at the Hokage Monument, the last three faces in particular, as he did so. There was work to be done, and rebuilding Konoha which had nearly been crippled during the recent invasion was at the top of the list.

He hated sitting still and staying in one place for more than a few weeks at a time, but now that he was Hokage, that was one of the sacrifices he would have to make, even though the intelligence network that was pretty much held together by him alone would fall apart without him to manage it. He would create a new one from scratch if he had to. He was Hokage despite the fact that he hadn't wanted the position, and he would do anything to bring Konoha back to it's former glory. One day, Konoha would be the great place that his predecessors had sacrificed themselves for once more no matter how many sacrifices he would have to make along the way.

* * *

In the afterlife, Uchiha Itachi stood quietly, not even bothering to defend himself, and waited for his little brother's rage to burn itself out. He deserved every blow that landed on him and then some. This was only a small part of his penance for what he had done.

"Why did you do it Itachi?" Sasuke yelled as he punched him in the gut repeatedly. "Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?"

He had no real answers he could give his beloved brother, as he'd asked that same question himself any number of times.

**Edited 12-3-12**


	14. Pein, Konan, Tobi Timeskip

Nagato, or rather his Deva path body which had once been his best friend Yahiko stood at his usual high perch at the top of the tallest building in Amegakure. In Ame, he ruled over the land as a benevolent god who protected all of those under him with his friend's beloved Konan who was practically worshiped as an angel at his side the way Yahiko had wanted to. As he watched over the land, he noted that the ever falling rain that served as a security net had identified a foreign presence. Another one of the Rokudaime Hokage's spies had been spotted in the country. Sighing, he sent one of his other bodies to dispose of it.

He had nothing to say to Jiraiya. The man had abandoned him, Konan, and Yahiko to their fates when they'd needed him the most and had later become ruler of the village which had brought him nothing but the pain he had taken his new name from. While he hadn't quite deigned to wipe it off the map, Konoha was his enemy, and always would be.

Despite the fact that the Kuubi had completely vanished, he'd had the Akatsuki continue with their normal routines, and hadn't stopped the mission to collect the other Biju. If he didn't give the group of missing-nin something to do, they would end up causing him no end of trouble. Kisame already was that, as he had killed his last two partners since Itachi, who had always managed to reign him in before he died. Whether or not they had been killed deliberately or accidentally, he neither knew nor cared. When it came to the missing Kyuubi, it would either reappear and cause some destruction, or it wouldn't. There were already rumors of Shukaku forming in the desert, and it was only a matter of time before the Sanbi which had vanished upon the Mizukage's death reappeared.

While Madara continued to hang around in the background doing whatever he was doing, he was the leader of the Akatsuki, and it was his plan that would be going forward, his plan where he would give everyone a large enough taste of destruction that they would never want war again. His plan where the Akatsuki would destroy the village system by undercutting it and holding the Biju back as their ace in the hole should the villages try to violently object, would be the Akatsuki's main goal.

* * *

From her spot beside Yahiko's body which was currently being controlled by Nagato Konan sighed as she watched yet another of Jiraiya-sensei's emissaries die. The man had stepped up his attempts at getting into contact with them when he had learned for a fact that she and Nagato were in Ame. Ten dead spies had obviously not been enough of an answer for the man.

Despite the fact that Nagato loved Jiraiya like a father, he also hated him, and didn't want to see him again. After Jiraiya had abandoned them to their fate, life had been hard. It had gotten even harder after Yahiko died thanks to interference from Konoha. While she and Nagato who had been calling himself Pain since Yahiko's death intellectually knew that Jiraiya had had nothing to do with Yahiko's passing, they still blamed him. They blamed him because he had done exactly that, nothing.

She sometimes thought that Nagato had held out hope right up until the end that Jiraiya would appear and rescue them like he had rescued them when they were a trio of starving children who had been orphaned by the war that had raged through their country. Jiraiya had failed to miraculously appear that day however, and Yahiko had sacrificed himself to save her and Jiraiya had continued to fail to appear for several years afterward.

There were times that she wished that Nagato would just send the man an angry letter telling him off. It had been nearly three years since Jiraiya had found them again, and Nagato had spent much of that time silently stewing over the issue. Had he been Yahiko, she would have been afraid that he would boil over, and do something completely stupid like storm over and destroy Konoha. Yahiko had been a great leader, but he'd also had a hot temper. Nagato however had been more the sort to either wallow in his misery or use it to drive him forward. With the Jiraiya issue however, he was wallowing.

She held her peace in this matter though. What Nagato chose to do about the Jiraiya situation was his business, and she had vowed to support him in any decision he chose to make in that regard. With Yahiko gone, Nagato was all she had left.

* * *

In another quiet corner of the world Tobi sighed. While certain parts of the plan had pretty much been ruined, there was enough of it left to continue forward and hope that Madara would have the answers when the time came. He had devoted his life to the plan, and it was all he had left in the world. According to the timetable he'd been given, it was time to step up the game and finish what could be finished with only eight Biju in the running. Madara-sama would know what to do about the ninth when he returned.

Until Madara returned, he would have to be Madara. He was Madara's living avatar until it was time to remake the world after all. After his world had started sliding irrevocably into hell, Madara had been the one who had remade him and given him purpose. Madara would be returning soon. As soon as the eight Biju that could be found in the world were collected, Nagato would be using the Rinne Tensei in order to bring Madara back. He would have to have patience, and make sure everything went well until then.

Part of making sure that everything went well at this stage was joining the Akatsuki in active operations. Fortunately, there was still a ring available despite the fact that the one Orochimaru had taken had been destroyed when Itachi had destroyed Otogakure since they hadn't managed to convince the terrorist bomber Deidara to join. The boy had chosen to blow himself up instead, nearly destroying Sasori of the Red Sands in the process.

He'd heard that Konoha had gotten their hands on the Sanbi as soon as its location had been confirmed. Whether or not that rumor was true however...Well, he'd always wanted to destroy Konoha for everything that place had done to him, and Itachi had said he could have at it before he died.

**Edited 12-3-12**


	15. The Akatsuki

The day for action finally came, and the Akatsuki which had spent nearly three years mainly focusing on doing missions in order to undercut the villages and fill the Akatsuki's coffers for the next phase of the plan went on Biju hunting footing.

One of the first Biju that had been gathered when the hunt had been stepped up had been the Ichibi which had not yet been retrieved by Suna who didn't have the ninja to waste on such a task at that time, and weren't entirely certain that they wanted another Jinchuriki considering how insane and destructive the last one had been. The fact that Chiyo didn't want to do another sealing at her advanced age had also contributed to Suna's decision to leave the beast alone. Hoshigake Kisame had been the one to collect the creature as he was nearly as powerful as it was by himself.

Unfortunately, his new partner didn't survive the encounter with the Ichibi. Kisame didn't particularly care about that, as he hadn't cared for any of the partners he'd gotten since Itachi had died. Before Itachi had died, the young man had somehow wormed his way into his heart, becoming one of his very few true friends, and since then, he'd placed the memory of that friend on a pedestal. Nobody would be able to live up to Kisame's somewhat biased memory of the Uchiha especially not someone who sought to take Itachi's place as his partner.

The Biju started coming in rather quickly after that, as Konoha had stayed out of Akatsuki business because they were still recovering from the invasion which had greatly decimated their forces since the Ichibi Shukaku had gone on a rampage through town before it had been stopped by the Rokudaime rather than going through the woods and causing minimal casualties as it would have done had a certain someone been there that day. Whether Konoha's reasons for not dealing with the Akatsuki were because they didn't think they had a stake in the Akatsuki's objectives, or because they were trying to hide the fact that they had the Sanbi sealed inside one of their children was left to speculation for a while. As a consequence of Konoha's non-interference however, the Biju were collected at a faster rate than they would have been had Konoha been there to delay the Akatsuki's actions.

Yakushi Kabuto who had managed to escape the fight with Kisame alive and had returned to Konoha since nobody had realized that he'd turned traitor, as Kakashi hadn't been there to catch him in the act, ended up killing Sasori for his own purposes, nearly dying in the process. The Rokudaime admonished him for going off on his own, but didn't really otherwise punish him. He did put a closer watch on him however, a watch which had uncovered the fact that the young Jounin who had passed the Chunin Exams six months after the invasion had continued a number of Orochimaru's experiments, forcing the man to leave Konoha once more taking several test subjects with him. After he settled into a base of his own, he showed every sign of picking up where Orochimaru had left off on just about everything but the body swapping immortality jutsu..

Kakuzu however did not get killed during the hunt for the Biju because there had been no prototype Rasenshuriken from Naruto to take out his head and the last of his hearts. His partner Hidan similarly survived, as Asuma didn't get involved in the fight with the Akatsuki even after his friend and fellow member of the Twelve Guardian Ninja had been killed, as he had been ordered to remain in Konoha by his Hokage who couldn't lose such an experienced and elite shinobi, especially with Hatake Kakashi and Maito Gai gone. With Asuma alive, Shikamaru who had joined the Daimyo's guard had no reason to get revenge on Hidan. Asuma however swore to get his revenge on the both Hidan and Kakuzu if he ever came across them in the field.

As for Nagato, well, Nagato didn't invade Konoha and level it with his Six Paths of Pain. Tobi went and did that for him after assassinating the Rokudaime Hokage in his sleep, and as it turned out, Konoha did have the Sanbi. It had been sealed into a scroll rather than a child however, and had been stored in a secure location. The destruction that had been caused in the village by Tobi and the Sanbi's rampage hadn't been as great as what could have been done by Nagato, but the death toll was a heck of a lot higher as there was no Rinne Tensei used to bring the casualties back. After a great deal of debate, Nara Shikaku who had been the Jounin Commander had been elected Hokage despite the fact that he didn't want the position.

The Five Kage Summit that had hastily been called in order to come up with a plan to deal with the threat to the hidden villages when the Raikage's brother who by that time had contained the only loose Biju besides the Kyuubi who was in the Shinigami's stomach had almost been captured was too little too late, especially since they couldn't come to an agreement on who the leader would be. Konoha and Suna didn't form a bloc, as there was nothing to unite them after the invasion and the Nandaime Hokage didn't trust the Godaime Kazekage any further then he could throw him without a Chakra assist, and there had been no crisis during the meeting to unite them.

The Kages sat at that table and continued bickering until the Hachibi had really been captured, and all of the Biju were in the Akatsuki's hands.

It was at that point that the Rinne Tensei had been used, and not on Konoha.

**Edited 12-3-12**


	16. Madara, An Ending, And a Possible Beginn

One thing that could be said about Uchiha Madara was that he could come up with a new plan very quickly, and adapt to changing situations almost instantly. When he learned that he could not get the Kyuubi back from the Shinigami who was disinclined to return it no matter how many times he summoned it and and therefore couldn't use it to complete the Juubi in order to finish his Moon's Eye Plan, he didn't throw too big of a fit at this particular setback. A number of people had died, and there was a large charred area where a forest should be, but considering the amount of destruction that man could have caused with the powers he possessed, it wasn't too bad.

After his small tantrum at being thwarted by chance was over, he pointed out to himself that he had eight of the Biju, a number of loyal and semi-loyal followers, and just about all the time in the world to conquer it. Nagato's plan did have merit, if he placed himself as ruler rather than Nagato that was.

With eight Biju, and a number of S-ranked and Kage ranked ninja at his command, the nations fell very quickly. Within a year, Uchiha Madara had declared himself supreme ruler of the world.

And, as Uchiha Madara stood ruler over all, a voice in the wilderness cried out about the unfairness of it all. Rather than wailing about how cruel fate had been, this voice vowed to do something about it. When the odds were against him, Naruto hadn't given up, the voice said. Naruto had been willing to die to free others, the voice said. If Naruto were here, he would have done something, the voice said...

Konohamaru was there however. He would not give up. No matter how long the odds were against him, he would not give in. He would not be afraid to die if it meant that people would be free. He would do something.

And, standing by Konohamaru's side was a man who was determined to fix the world he had helped break when he had fallen for Madara's honeyed words of how this world was a hell that they could fix if he were just willing to follow his plan. No, Naruto wasn't there but Konohamaru was, and so was Obito.

**Edited 12-3-12**


End file.
